If Nobody Does Remarkable Things
Reviewed by Joseph Klink
Panndora Productions
Through May 14, 2022
RECOMMENDED
Climates are changing. How can we come to terms with the rapidly changing environments of our planet Earth, with knowing our part in the demise of its natural conditions? We are responsible as an entire population, an intelligent species that is granted a unique burden of awareness. Yes, most of us are aware of what is happening outside, but we’ll be damned if balancing what is happening inside in our lives somehow makes assuming responsibility for climate change any easier. So what happens if we give up on trying to save our world, and ourselves, the way we remembered them, when we’ve burnt out?
If Nobody Does Remarkable Things is a new play by Emma Gibson, with its world premiere at The Garage Theatre in Long Beach, and movingly directed by Pam Paulson. Gibson masterfully serves a slice of life, set in the not-too-distant future, and it is served on a dusty, cracked plate. June (played by Mariana Arôxa) is an astronaut on the ISS, and she is writing a play about her mother, Anna (played by Karen Wray) that also features Anna’s husband, Paul (Pete Taylor), her former lover, Joel (Erik Pfeifer), and a young June, herself (Chloe Ness). We go back and forth between the play within the play, a recount of a specific time in Anna’s life where she must make an important decision, and the ISS where adult June provides clarity with additional details, but also beautiful, personal moments that were clearly shaped by her upbringing. Anna is a former climate activist, and Joel has unexpectedly invited himself back into her life, after nearly ruining it decades prior, to persuade her to join him on a new global campaign to reinvigorate humans into taking action. This all takes place inside a modest, but comfortable, living room while unnatural-made-natural storms rage outside to the sound of emergency sirens. Earth is falling apart, and just when Anna seems to have put her past behind her, assembling herself, she is forced to take a hard look back.
What really makes this production work for me, opening up to the idea instead of being turned off by guilt as a fellow human that contributes to carbon emissions, is the intimate and careful work that went into developing these characters and relationships. Imagine: that overwhelming feeling when you’re flooded with news of devastation on a much larger scale than in your own life, but before you can even consider devastation outside something happens to shake or break your own foundation. The characters spend some time discussing the current state of the earth, but these actors successfully elevate the work with establishing deep connections to one another over often the simplest of dialogue. Anna (Wray) fluctuates with how much of herself she has left to give outside of her small world that has become her everything. It is almost too much that is being asked of her, and that is life as we know it in just as real a way as our changing Earth. But under the weight of it all, we keep living and the planet keeps spinning, so what are we to do about it?
Panndora Productions, performing at The Garage Theatre, located at 251 E. 7th Street, Long Beach; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., May 1 & 8, 8 pm, Thurs., May 12, 8pm; thru May 14. Running time 90 minutes with no intermission. https://www.panndoraproductions.com/
